Ion beam technology was developed at NASA in the 1960’s as a means of producing thrust on spacecraft. Several spacecraft have used ion beam thrusters for station keeping and trajectory control. Recently, the spacecraft Deep Space 1, demonstrated the long duration performance capabilities and propulsion advantages of ion-beam thrusters.

Ion beam sources also have numerous terrestrial applications. In the past decade, ion beams have been used for depositing oxides, diamond-like carbon, and other useful coatings on mechanical and optical hardware. They have also been used to fabricate the read/write heads used in computer hard-drives and thin-film optical filters for telecommunication applications.

Click here for an introduction to ion beam source technology.